Portable personal computers have developed steadily from their early "suit case" design, through the smaller "laptop" design, and now, with the aid of microelectronics, to the commercially valuable "notebook" variation. Early portables were bulky and inefficient, and were not deemed by many to be a major advance over desktop personal computers. Laptops and notebooks have considerably improved the state-of-the-art by providing a battery supply, light weight circuitry and compartments, and a compact housing, and are destined to be as popular as desktop models.
In many of these smaller laptop computer models, a keyboard compartment is hinged to a display screen compartment in such a manner that it is possible to fold the display screen compartment down against the keyboard compartment and to latch the two together. A disk drive is often mounted in the keyboard compartment in such a manner that the plane of the disk is parallel to the planar top and bottom surfaces of the computer housing when the housing is closed. Additional functional features have included, for example, input/output ports, hard drives, and built-in modems.
In other models, such as described in European Patent Application No. 0 371 642, the keyboard is mounted inside a pivotably mounted cover, and a swivelling floppy disk drive unit is disposed within the display screen compartment. The surface area of the keyboard of this unit is smaller than that of the display screen compartment so as to fit snugly inside upon closing.
Despite their popularity and versatile compact size, laptop and notebook computers have in many instances included keyboards of less than full size, i.e. the size of an average desktop personal computer keyboard. For example, a laptop typically may have a keyboard having a width of about 35 cm as opposed to a equally functional desktop computer keyboard having a width of about 50 cm. Moreover, because the alphanumeric keys must be of sufficient size to accommodate even large fingers, certain keys are often deleted or rearranged from their "usual" position on the keyboard to retain compactness. These accommodations have made it more difficult for many users to transfer their typing skills to the smaller keyboards, have increased the likelihood of user error, and have sacrificed the available options associated with the missing keys.
Accordingly, there is a need for a portable, fully functional, personal computer having a light weight, compact construction, but having a complete, full size keyboard.